


You Want It Darker

by MerryWriting



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Dark, Leonard Cohen is life, Song fic, but not graphic, this broke me a little
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 10:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11183601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MerryWriting/pseuds/MerryWriting
Summary: We kill the flame.Song fic based around how the things Shepard has done and seen would affect her mentally and emotionally. A little darker than the canon universe, but no graphic violence etc here. Blame Warhammer 40,000 for some of the aesthetic.





	You Want It Darker

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first song!fic I’ve ever written, so constructive criticism would be appreciated.

 

_If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game  
If you are the healer, it means I'm broken and lame_

Lilith watched Thessia burn as the shuttle slowly glided towards the earth, acrid fear and burning hatred thick as treacle in her throat. James swore quietly her side, muttering a prayer or a curse in Spanish as he picked off a marauder crouched behind cover. The Asari troops that looked up to them were not hopeful; they knew, as she did, that the Gods and Goddesses were no longer looking down on them.

 

They knew that there was nothing she could do, just as she had known before suiting up that they would change nothing here. The heaviness of the night lay on her mind, a searing reminder of the past. A hot, slimy despair that crawled into bed with her each and every night.

_  
If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame_

 

She raised her eyes to the bruised sky and said an ashen prayer, drying her mouth even as adrenaline flooded it with spit. The jolt of solid earth on her feet meant, as it always had, that someone was going to die. They were all migrants, it seemed, in the way of the Quarian. When had alliance life ever meant anything else? The faces of the dead didn’t care which planet they crowded her on, only that they did it while the earth spun under her feet. In the distance, in the back, she could see Jenkins; his hopeful face still spattered with blood.

If she had taken point.

If she had been a better leader.

Lilith raised her rifle, centring a group of marauders in the scope. They were dragging of Asari, for conversion no doubt. Their screams didn’t have to be audible; their panic was written large in every jerky twist, every elastic gurn, every buck and kick.

 

She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

  
You want it darker  
We kill the flame

Blood on blue skin; the first Asari fell silent and still, the second flopped comically. It was, Lilith told herself, a mercy.

 

 _Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name_  
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame  
A million candles burning for the help that never came  
You want it darker

This was what they wanted from her. This was why you called Lilith Shepard in; to do the jobs no-one wanted. To kill and to maim. To perform the mercy killings and the autopsies and to sweep the minefields and to stack the bodies.

To do what no-one else _could._

 

That was why failure stung so much more, why it was such a laceration of the soul to see the hopes of the galaxy carried off by an agent in black. Who did you call when the reaper man failed to come through? Who else was there?

The weight of three hundred thousand souls bore down on her as sweat slicked fingers slipped from the steel edge. For the second time she closed her eyes, this time for her own mercy.

 

_Hineni, hineni  
I'm ready, my lord_

 

Strong hands pulled her to safety in hell. James; he smiled sadly, clapped her shoulder, held her as close as he could on the battlefield and filled her head with hot, useless platitudes.

_There's a lover in the story  
But the story's still the same_

Useless fluff and niceties. He worshipped her, she knew, and yet it meant so little when the world, every corner of the galaxy really, was fighting a war of attrition. People were marrying, spawning, living and loving in the midst of it all, but she was excluded from it all by virtue of the Name.

 

Shepard.

 

The Name to launch a thousand ships. The Name that ordered a million deaths. Her name, her burden. Her soul on the line, attached to promises and pacts and deals, hinging on the actions of every man and woman under her command.

 

What a name. What fresh hells each morning, greeting her in the empty, all-purpose chapel. Lilith stared at the sloped walls, the carefully chosen selection of symbols and deities. All the major religions of the galaxy found in this small cupboard, but none of the peace. None of the answers she needed.

  
There's a lullaby for suffering  
And a paradox to blame

She traced the curves of the figures, smoothed her palm on the book she could not read anymore. It’s dog-eared pages were too earnest, too eager, and her heart was so cold that she feared it would crumble under such intense heat. The love of God was a burden she could not bear. A slander she would not take.

  
But it's written in the scriptures  
And it's not some idle claim  
You want it darker

“Shepard,” Jokers voice came over the comms, “sorry to bother you… Hacketts calling. He needs you to go somewhere in the Terminus. He didn’t say much, but I think it’s a gun and run.” Lilith nodded,

“Ok, Jeff,” she said, “I’ll be right there.”

_  
We kill the flame_

 

A run and gun it was not.

 

Insurgency culling would have been a better term. The frightened, malnourished refugees, so desperate for salvation that they would offer up sacrifice to the machine Gods were now her enemies, too. They surrendered at the sight of the Normandy, and though the landing party were shocked by their fear, Lilith had known it would be so; she was the bogeyman as well as the guardian angel. She was Lilith and she was Eve. She was the Leveller and the Saviour. It depended upon which day they crossed paths; for these souls she could not be what she wanted to be.

 

_They're lining up the prisoners  
And the guards are taking aim_

“Set up the firing squad,” she said without a whisper of doubt,

“What, no!” James jerked as if he had been shot, “Lil’, Shepard… really?” His eyes flicked over her face as if they might find a hint of humour. As if this could be a fucking joke.

“Really,” she said, “they already offered this settlements location to the reapers. We strip it and they die. The scales have to balance.”

“They’re frightened!”

“We’re all frightened, Lieutenant,” she hissed, “they offered their soul to the devil. Well now I’m here to collect.”

  
I struggled with some demons  
They were middle class and tame

_  
I didn't know I had permission to murder and to maim_

“I can’t support this,” he said quietly,

“You don’t have to, Lieutenant,” she said, relishing the flinch, “you just need to do what you’re fucking told. Help them to strip the settlement. I’ll deal with this.”

With them; that was the part she couldn’t say. ‘Sorry’ was the other part that foiled her, and so she just stared as they were lined up.

“You gave over your lives, the lives of your children, and information which could have given over the lives of thousands more,” the words were ash, “some of you have asked for forgiveness and for mercy….”

_  
You want it darker_

“I am not God. I can give you neither.” She watched each and every body fall without flinching. This was her duty; the mercy that no-one else could dispense. Once she would have pulled the trigger herself, but her fingers had lost the power for such things after the third cull. This was the fiftieth.

There was no limit to what people would do when cornered

 

_Hineni, hineni  
I'm ready, my lord_

 

When she fell to her knees in the shower, retching and coughing, it was as much a surprise as anything could have been. The green bile that flooded from her empty stomach was, she told herself, the product of erratic diet, irregular hydration, and the sudden heat of the shower.

 

The blood and muck that circled the drain with it was of no consequence. She could do this. She was Shepard, and tonight she was alone. James slept in his own bunk for the first time in months.

She wept for the space he didn’t fill, but his questions were unmissed. His scent was so much more comforting than his words could ever be.

 

Be silent, but be here, she wanted to say. I don’t need more questions.

I don’t need to be Shepard.

 

 _Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name_  
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame  
A million candles burning for the love that never came

Her face on the news, her actions under the spotlight.

 

They hated and revered her.

  
You want it darker  
We kill the flame

She hated and revered herself. Something stuttered, close to dying, with each gunshot, with each headbutt, with each whiplash of fiery temper. They wanted this, they wanted _her_ , and now they wanted her gone. And so when the beacon stood in the distance she knew, before the truck flipped, before James was dragged, bloodied but alive, from under it that she would go on alone.

 

It was meant to be this way, even though he begged her to stay with him, it had to be this way. In the eyes of the child she saw what she had become, a shadow to cover the galaxy, and she quailed. It was too much.

She knelt before the youthful face of God and saw the inevitability of it all.

 

 _If you are the dealer, let me out of the game_  
If you are the healer, I'm broken and lame  
If thine is the glory, mine must be the shame  
You want it darker

He did not expect the gunshot, and could not see that she was aiming through him. He didn’t expect the sudden lurch of the Citadel, or the understanding in her eyes. A million lives lost already; what was the consciousness of ones and zeros?

 

Lilith wiped the galaxy clean, and then let the wreckage consume her; it was the least she could do.

_Hineni, hineni  
Hineni, hineni_

The darkness was stifling, her helmet was cracked, and yet air filled her lungs with each gasp. Voices came close, footsteps; a call would bring them running to her aid and she would be Shepard Saviour once more.

_  
I'm ready, my lord_

She closed her eyes and turned away from the sound.


End file.
